You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2006.
The Pump Handle is taking the remainder of the year off.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2007.
By David Michaels
In July, two unions, backed by a group of scientists, petitioned both federal OSHA and California OSHA to issue rules to protect workers from diacetyl, the chemical implicated in dozens of cases of lung disease in the food industry (See our earlier post “Artificial Butter Flavor is (Still) Killing Workers”).
Federal OSHA continues to do nothing. Earlier this month, a group of us met with several high level OSHA officials, who told us that the agency was still considering our petition. In other words, no action planned.
California, however, is moving forward.
The biggest news in science and public health was the tragic, though not unexpected, guilty verdict in the Libyan trial of six medics accused of deliberately infecting patients with HIV. Several members of the scientific community, mobilized by Nature reporter Declan Butler and several bloggers, drew attention to the scientific evidence demonstrating the medics´ innocence in the weeks before the trial, but science lost this one. Declan Butler, reporter has posts chronicling developments in this case; Revere at Effect Measure and Orac at Respectful Insolence have news and commentary on the verdict.
In other news:
By David Michaels
It came as no surprise to some observers that VaxGen (a biotech company in Brisbane, California) failed to meet the specifications of its contract to provide the US government with 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine. VaxGen has been playing fast and loose for quite some time – most notably with a famous instance of data dredging in the analysis of the clinical trials for AIDSVAX, its failed AIDS vaccine. I’ll come back to that below.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced was ending its sole-supplier contract with VaxGen, which would have been worth up to $877.5 had the company been able to produce vaccines that worked. HHS officials would not discuss the reasons of the cancellation, but, according to Renae Merle’s piece in today’s Washington Post, “HHS evidently canceled the contract after VaxGen missed its deadline Monday to begin human testing because of concerns at the Food and Drug Administration about the product’s reliability.”
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
We continue our summary of the Institute of Medicine “Letter Report” on non-drug non-vaccine measures to slow or contain the spread of an influenza pandemic of a severity similar or worse than that of 1918 (see previous post on models here). The IOM report examined several analyses of historical data from 1918 to see if it was possible to obtain information on the effectiveness interventions on the pattern of outbreaks in various cities in the US. It is well known that both timing and severity varied a great deal in that pandemic. The goal was to see if differences in morbidity and mortality were related to specific actions taken in response.
Thousands of hotel workers in Boston are awaiting the results of contract negotiations between Unite Here! Local 26 and the city’s major hotel operators. Although their current contract expired on November 30, both sides agreed to extend it until February 1, 2007 while they continue to meet at the bargaining table. Unite Here! Local 26 represents about 6,000 housekeepers, waitstaff, bellmen and other hotel workers in Boston, who are seeking a five-year contract with a wage increase, and larger contributions from their employers on healthcare and retirement plans. Besides these bread and butter concerns, the housekeepers are also seeking health and safety protections, in the form of workload relief. Read the rest of this entry »
by Revere, cross-posted on Effect Measure
On December 11, The Institute of Medicine, one of the four constituent parts of the National Academies of Science, released a “letter report” reviewing the scant information on effects from non-drug measures to slow or contain spread of an influenza pandemic (available as a free download here). The report was produced after a special workshop on October 25 in which the panel participants heard from a variety of experts, with subsequent deliberations that produced the summary letter report and its recommendations.
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006
An urgent communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) expresses concisely how far behind we are in being prepared for a global pandemic of influenza. Currently there are a number of vaccines under development, some of which might protect against an H5N1 virus that has become readily transmissible from person to person. But none are in production, and even if some were found adequate (not the case) and large scale production begun (far from the case), we, the world, would still be in a fix:
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The Bush Administration hates science. Science is reality-based and some truths are politically inconvenient. But there are things that can be done. Like this:
Earlier this week, the Bush Administration released its semi-annual regulatory plan (71 Federal Register 72725, Dec 11, 2006). The 473-page document describes the President’s regulatory priorities, with the “aim of implementing an effective and results-oriented regulatory system.” The document, prepared by the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), provides plenty of fodder for the blogosphere, but I’ll focus here on just one absurd statement in the Department of Labor’s section (beginning on page 7282 
describing its 19 high-priority items. Here’s what the document says about crystalline silica:
Ruth Levine of Global Health Policy offers the AIDS-Malaria link as a reason disease-by-disease thinking isn’t the way to go.
Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog reports on which US publishers don’t think their audiences can handle George Monbiot’s book “Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.”
Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily describes research into improving mood with fast thinking and positive statements.
Jordan Barab at Confined Space has the goods on the nominee for EPA’s Inspector General position.
Page Rockwell at Broadsheet considers the prospects for getting HPV vaccine Gardasil to women around the world.
Andrew Leonard at How the World Works cites data from a new FAO report on world agriculture and suggests that we’ll soon have an answer in the technological optimism vs. Malthusian limts debate.
Integrity of Science — one of the newest members of the ScienceBlogs empire — highlights some of the key points from the “Defining and Protecting the Integrity of Science” session of the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting.
Could anyone besides the Economist dare to think it could overturn three of green shoppers’ sacred labels in a mere three pages? Its 12/7/06 article “Voting with Your Trolley” tries to debunk organic, Fair Trade, and local foods all at once. I didn’t find it very convincing.
By Dick Clapp
On December 1, NPR’s Living on Earth aired a segment on conflicts of interest in medical research. Host Bruce Gellerman interviewed Dr. Lennart Hardell, lead author of a recent article on conflicts of interest in cancer research published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and me. On LOE’s website, there’s also a conversation between Gellerman and Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, one of the researchers whom Hardell and his co-authors criticized in their article.
It’s instructive to examine Hardell’s allegations about Trichopoulos and Trichopoulos’s response, because both are fairly typical of the widespread dilemma of conflicts of interest in medical research.
by PotomacFeverish
In the first of what may be numerous resignations, Scott Gottlieb, MD has announced that he will leave his post as Deputy Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration. He has been at the center of the political science practiced at the FDA as noted by Time last year:
Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency’s second-ranked post at FDA.
By David Michaels
This morning’s AP wire brings news of yet another E. Coli outbreak, this one resulting in 14 hospitalizations (so far) among customers of a “Taco John’s” restaurant in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
This follows the Taco Bell E. Coli outbreak, with more than 60 cases in 5 states.
Which followed the spinach E. Coli outbreak that sickened 200 people.
The FDA may be doing a terrific job investigating each of these outbreaks, but has failed in its primary mission: to prevent the outbreaks in the first place. The FDA is suffering from the effects of being part of a government that no longer takes its public health responsibilities seriously.
Read the rest of this entry »
Health and environmental bloggers have covered a wide array of topics this week. Some highlights:
Steve at Omni Brain (don’t click the link while eating) displays graphic warnings from Belgian and Thai cigarette packs
Merrill Goozner at GoonzNews posts an excerpt from his just-published article (cover story of The Scientist, for those with subscriptions) on treating malaria on the Thai-Burmese border.
Revere at Effect Measure challenged those who inveigh against alternative medicine to respond to a study that found chicken soup to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis, and a lively discussion ensued. (Revere may also win the award for the week’s best post title.)
If you’re obsessed with biofuels, head over to Gristmill.
It’s also been a busy week in US environmental and occupational health news. A few links:
Earlier this year, President Bush nominated Susan E. Dudley of the Mercatus Center to replace John Graham, PhD, as the head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The office oversees all of the Administration’s regulatory policies, including public health and environmental rules, and is often the last major hurdle faced by agencies like OSHA or EPA before a new regulation can be proposed. As Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) noted at Ms. Dudley’s November 13 confirmation hearing, OIRA lacks name recognition among the public, but its work has tremendous “impact on the lives of all Americans.”
“Regulations affect virtually every part of our lives. They make us safer and healthier. ….I am particularly interested in the influence that OIRA has on the development of environmental regulations…[which are] vital to the protection of our lakes and rivers and the air we breathe.”
Despite Ms. Dudley’s insistence that she “cares deeply about the environment,” she didn’t impress the members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) is reporting that chairman Collins says a vote on the nomination is “pointless” because
“it appears there is no Democratic support on the committee for Susan Dudley.” Moreover, BNA reported “Collins declined to say whether Republicans on the committee also objected to the nomination.”
By David Michaels
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal published last December (by Peter Waldman, 12/23/05), product defense experts at ChemRisk pulled off a particularly audacious scam on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility that was being sued for contaminating drinking water with hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.
ChemRisk’s scientists went to China to obtain the raw data of a 1987 study that had implicated chromium-polluted water in high cancer rates, paying the lead author $2,000, re-analyzing his data, changing the results to exonerate chromium and republishing the study still under his name in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), without obtaining his permission and without acknowledging that ChemRisk had done virtually all the work on the new study.
Following the exposé, the editor of JOEM retracted the paper (July 2006 issue).
Now the story has resurfaced, with the paper’s second author claiming (according to her attorney) that the Wall Street Journal’s coverage was “false and defamatory,” and demanding a retraction and apology. She is also demanding that JOEM withdraw their retraction, and re-publish the original article.
Neither the WSJ or JOEM are backing down. Here are the details:
By David Michaels
In 1993, the US Supreme Court ruled in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that judges must act as “gatekeepers” in the courtroom, determining if the scientific evidence introduced is relevant and reliable. The Daubert decision has had tremedous impact on how science is used (and misused) in courts.
That judges are not scientists, and are likely to have difficulty evaluating complex scientific evidence, was underscored in last week’s argument over whether the EPA should regulate the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as a pollutant. When Justice Antonin Scalia was corrected on his statement about where in the atmosphere carbon dioxide ends up, he responded:
“Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I’m not a scientist.”
Laughter followed.
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure
We are asking the scienceblogging community once again to rally on behalf of our colleagues on trial for their lives in Libya. They have been accused of infecting over 400 children with HIV (see previous posts, here, here, here, here, here and here). When last we made an appeal (here) the response was extraordinary and spread quickly to the blogosphere on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. The campaign to save the six health workers began with a strongly worded editorial in Nature and spread via the science blogosphere to the wider science and human rights organizations and from there to the New York Times, Washington Post, the Economist and beyond (see Declan Butler’s account and here for the links to over 400 blog and other posts). Nature has kept up the pressure and all this resulted in an appeal by 114 Nobel Laureates, just as the trial ended without hearing the scientific evidence. The verdict and sentencing if guilty (as expected) will be on December 19. [More below the fold]
By David Michaels
In my post Monday, I wrote that breathing diacetyl, the chemical in artificial butter flavor, is killing and crippling workers around the country. It is now more than six years since the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was first notified that workers in a popcorn plant in Missouri had developed the terrible and sometimes fatal lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans.
In response, the agency did send an inspector to the facility, but OSHA’s Area Director concluded that OSHA could not issue a citation since the agency had no standards on the chemicals in artificial butter flavor. No standard means no standard violated. (Never mind that OSHA has standards on fewer than 500 of the thousands of chemicals used in today’s workplace).
While India’s population has been growing, its rice harvests have been declining. Two of the culprits, reports the BBC (citing a study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), are particulate and greenhouse-gas pollution.
Read the rest of this entry »
by PotomacFeverish
The Washington Post announced what we already knew. That the lame duck sessions of Congress (one already past, one this week) will not accomplish much. So what, you say? They hadn’t accomplished much for the last year, why should we care now?
Jonathan Weisman reports:
Congress will convene on Tuesday for what some fear will be the lamest of lame-duck sessions, and GOP leaders have decided to take a minimalist approach before turning over the reins of power to the Democrats. Rather than a final surge of legislative activity, Congress will probably wrap up things after a single, short week of work. They have even decided to punt decisions on annual government spending measures to the Democrats next year.
By David Michaels
Every year, Marion Ohio (nickname: “popcorn capital of the world”) hosts the largest popcorn festival in the world, with 250,000 attendees. The Orville Redenbacher Parade is one of the festivals’ highlights. Redenbacher, who developed the hybrid corn strain that pops so uniformly, was actually from Indiana, but ConAgra Foods manufactures the best selling microwave popcorn brand “Orville Redenbacher’s” (along with Act II brand) at its factory in Marion.
Americans like their popcorn to taste like it has butter on it. So workers at the Marion plant apply a mix of chemicals that includes diacetyl, the primary component of artificial butter flavor.
It may be safe to eat diacetyl, but breathing the chemical is killing workers.
Today is World AIDS Day, and there’s no shortage of coverage in the blogosphere. Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake combines links to news stories with her own reflections, and Izzy at Unbossed remembers 1982, before they called it AIDS. Michael Bernstein and Nandini Oomman of Global Health Policy report from the World AIDS Day Event in Nairobi, and Christine Gorman of TIME’s Global Health Update links to photos and stories of people living with AIDS.
On other topics:
by OSHAL
It is worthwhile reading the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (report PDF here; Jordan Barab’s take here) that recommends a review of the effectiveness of current strategies for workplace safety and health. Of particular interest to me is the attitude and direction of this Administration’s OSHA, in particular for those workplaces with the dirtiest jobs, where the lowest wages prevail, where many do not speak English, and where there is no union to defend their rights or speak for them.
Where are these “forgotten workers”? They are in meatpacking and poultry plants, at residential construction sites, in office buildings at night laboring as janitors, in fast food shops…the list goes on and on. Oh yes, you may say that many of these sites are not subject to inspections and enforcement of health and safety standards because “there are 10 or fewer workers at the site,” but wait, there are thousands of these sites across this country. What kind of loophole is that? Given it, do we really know the injury and illnesses rates for US workers? Does anyone really believe that this Administration’s “compliance assistance” measures protects these workers?
by Susan F. Wood
After the recent post here on KETEK, both the Wall Street Journal and Senator Grassley are on the move. The WSJ reports today on another antibiotic Cubicin which has been seeking approval for use in endocarditis and discusses the competing issues of data quality and high standards, with the push for more antibiotics, particularly in the case of serious infections without effective treatment. The case of Cubicin in some respects serves as an example of this, however Ketek does not. They both illustrate problems identified by the recent Institute of Medicine Report on drug safety.
By David Michaels
The Bush Administration is manufacturing uncertainty about global warming, even as its allies in the carbon producing industries are abandoning it.
Last week, the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin reported that “top executives at many of the nation’s largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.” John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co, said
We have to deal with greenhouse gases. From Shell’s point of view, the debate is over. When 90-plus percent of the world’s leading figures believe that greenhouse gases have impacted the climate of the Earth, who is Shell to say, ‘Let’s debate the science’?”
Yet on Wednesday, in front of the US Supreme Court, the Bush Administration said “Let’s debate the science.”
